


Be More Brave

by forgetme



Category: Naruto
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetme/pseuds/forgetme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gai gets a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The last thing Maito Gai sees is Uchiha Madara’s grin, a blood splattered flash of white teeth. He is standing up despite the gaping hole in his side, despite the devastating attacks from Gai, ancient and forbidden techniques powerful enough to pulverize mountains. In a fading world Gai sees only bared gums, hears only maniacal laughter and has nothing left but the certainty that all was in vain.

Kakashi’s hoarse scream is still ringing in his ears. All of this – a whole life dedicated to mastering the eight gates – and still Gai couldn’t protect his students, couldn’t protect his rival, couldn’t save even a single one of his most precious people. Even at the very end, he was never as strong as his father.

One last moment, one last breath, one last burst of burning chakra. There is something there, just beyond. Beyond the pain, beyond the eighth gate, beyond time and space. The world warps around him, folds under the power of his will. Maybe, he thinks, pushing through the agony, not ready to give up just yet. His body might be crumbling to ashes already – and he can feel it, the heat at the center of the flame – but there is still something else. Something _more._

Gai roars and reaches for that, even as he wishes he could turn back, one last time, to see Lee’s face and, in the distance, Kakashi’s.

***

The first thing Maito Gai sees is a giant, furry thing with eerily gleaming eyes. He screams and when his voice comes out sounding high-pitched and wrong, he screams some more until the room explodes with light.

Instinctively, he brings up his arms to guard his face and rolls onto his side, to make himself a smaller target.

“Gai?”

Gai freezes.

There’s the muffled sound of footsteps, bare feet on carpet, still Gai can tell that he’s not dealing with a small man. He can hear the weight in those steps, can feel it reverberating through his body because, he realizes, he’s lying on a futon on the ground. His brain analyzes these sounds automatically, just as automatically as he tries to sense this person’s chakra. It’s barely there, the faintest flame like a civilian’s or a young academy student’s, except that Gai knows this chakra like he knows his own.

He can’t breathe.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

As the weight settles down next to him, Gai slowly opens his eyes. He sees his arms, except they’re not his arms; they’re thin, sticklike, little baby arms, no hair, barely any muscle.

“Hey, it’s okay. Papa’s here now!”

The sound of this voice, this smell, this chakra pattern. Each and every one of Gai’s senses tells him that his father is right there, sitting next to him. He peeks out from between his strange little arms and there he is.  Gai feels like his heart has stopped beating. It is his dad, there can be no mistake. Maito Dai is sitting cross-legged on the floor. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and green sweatpants and his hair is rumpled from sleep. His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, just the way they always did. Gai can even see the thick, coarse hair peek out from under the hem of his shirt.

His father puts one hand on Gai’s shoulder, stroking gently.  “I know you’re worried because of the academy entrance exams next week, but fear not! You’ll do great! I believe in you with all my heart!”

Gai swallows. He lowers his arms and gives up his defensive curl. “Kai,” he mumbles under his breath, letting his chakra flare to break through this cruel illusion. Nothing happens except that his father’s impressive brows shift as his smile melts into a look of concern.

“Do you feel sick?” Before he can do anything, Gai is lifted into his father’s strong arms, his father’s stubbly cheek rubbing against his. It’s scratchy and uncomfortable and it’s also the most wonderful feeling in the world and he has missed this so much. It hurts. Gai’s last memory of his father – the one that has been seared into his mind forever, overshadowing all the other ones – is the smell of his dad’s burning flesh as he is devoured by the eighth gate. What Gai smells now is his father’s real scent, his slightly spicy musk, what he feels is his father’s real warmth, not the shockwave of heat that blasted him when his father went to his death.

“I don’t think you have a fever,” Dai mumbles. “Does your stomach hurt?”

Mutely, Gai shakes his head. His chest feels tight but light at the same time as though a hot air balloon is expanding inside of him. His feelings are too much to keep them locked up.

“Papa,” he says, his tiny voice cracking, and with that the tears start to flow.

***

Gai doesn’t know how long he cried; only that he cried like a child, in big hiccupping sobs, without embarrassment or restraint, while his father rubbed his back and stroked his hair and made soft comforting noises.

In the end the teddy bear is shoved aside to make room for Gai and his dad, who falls asleep lying on top of the covers with Gai curled up on his chest. As he listens to his father’s steady heartbeat, Gai tries to remember the exact moment of his “death”. He remembers the gates, of course, that’s easy because the pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before – and he had known pain. But—

Lee’s tears, Kakashi’s scream, Madara’s laughter. Evening Elephant and Night Gai and the sensation of the bones in his right leg splintering into a thousand pieces, his toes crumbling to ashes to be carried off by the breeze. All of this amidst the rush of power and speed and the world stopping, space and time warping around him. He’d left his body behind in the end, but he hadn’t died. This was not the afterlife, despite what Kakashi had told him that one drunken night. About how he’d met his father on the other side. How there’d been a long talk and finally forgiveness.

Gai is corporeal – he pinched himself to make sure – and he seems to be stuck in this small body – his body, but younger, much, much younger. He does the genjutsu release a second, then a third time while his father sleeps. Again nothing changes. The light is on in his small childhood room, so Gai looks around, recognizing things he’d long forgotten. Like the ragged teddy bear on the floor. It used to have a name. Gai reaches out to touch the worn brown fur, soft but more flat than fluffy; it looks like it has been cuddled a little too often for its own good.  

Gai didn’t have many toys as a child, he remembers that now. They had to live off a genin’s pay for D- and C-rank missions until he was old enough to contribute to the household finances, after all.

Carefully, so as not to wake his father, Gai slips out from under the heavy arm draped over his body. Dai makes a small noise and Gai stops in his tracks for a second, then breathes a sigh of relief when his dad resumes his soft snoring.

The apartment is as he remembers it, small, a little dingy. Gai peeks into the living-room that doubles as his father’s bedroom and is struck by an instant pang of recognition. There is the yellow couch where he used to sit with his dad reading picture books, there is the futon rolled out in the corner, there’s the closet filled with training weights and the door to the kitchen.  

Determined, he marches on into the bathroom. A flick of the light switch – higher on the wall than it should be, Gai thinks, except, of course, it’s not that anything is actually higher, it’s _his_ size that’s changed – and there he is, his reflection in the mirror over the sink. A child blinking in confusion. His eyes are still red-rimmed from crying, a bit of snot crusted under his right nostril and, yes, he is small. Gai rubs at his eyes, then drags a hand through his hair, longer than he remembers, it falls to his painfully narrow shoulders.

This is not Konoha’s Mighty Green Beast. It’s a child. He really is a child. Gai looks down at his small hands, tugs on his soft terrycloth pajamas, flexes his almost nonexistent muscles and finally sticks his tongue out at his reflection. All the while thoughts race through his head. His father mentioned the entrance exams. In a week, he said. How old was Gai when he took them? Five, he thinks. He was five years old. That means… It means Lee, Tenten and Neji aren’t even born yet. It means that Kakashi is four and that Konoha’s White Fang has yet to go on that fateful mission, the one that will end up ruining his life.

It means, Gai thinks, his jaw clenching, that Uchiha Obito is out there in the village, still a little brat himself with not even the faintest idea of what he will become.

Gai meets his own eyes in the mirror. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. He knows this smile. The face isn’t quite the one he remembers, but the smile is – it is the same one he showed Uchiha Madara before taking a chunk out of him. Gai puts one hand on his hip, then he raises the other arm over his head, only to bring it down outstretched, quick like a karate chop, but instead of an open palm strike, Gai’s hand is in a fist, thumbs-up. He grins at himself. His first real Nice Guy Promise! “I’m going to change it!” he tells the boy in the mirror. “Everything! I, Maito Gai, am going to protect all my precious people! That’s my promise!”

And later when he crawls into bed next to his father and snuggles up to his chest to hear the strong steady beat of his heart, Gai repeats in a whisper, “This time, I’m going to protect you, papa.”


	2. Chapter 2

At first Gai thinks maybe it was all a dream and when he opens his eyes, he’ll be at home in his bed. He’ll be thirty-one years old, a jounin with a wonderful team of students and a rival just waiting to be challenged. Except that that’s not how it all ended. There was the war, Obito, Uchiha Madara. _Neji,_ who the last time Gai saw him had stopped being young and brilliant and was only irreversibly dead.

Whatever awaits him can’t be worse than that.

It’s early morning, light peeking shyly through the blinds. His father’s face, smoothed by sleep, looks young under the stubble. When Gai does the math in his head, he realizes that if he is five years old, his dad must be twenty-seven, which makes him even younger than Gai was when—

Does it matter? Either way, it seems incredibly young.

Gai reaches out and tugs on his father’s thick mustache. The feel of the coarse, bristly hairs makes him remember how fascinated he used to be by it when he was a child. He’d use every opportunity to pull on his dad’s hair, and there was so much hair to pull on.

Dai’s nose twitches, then the twitch moves to his impressive eyebrows and finally his eyes open. He blinks at Gai before breaking into a wide grin.

“Come here, you! Good morning!”

His father’s hugs are just as rib-crushing as he remembered, nevertheless Gai smiles against Dai’s chest, even as his face is smushed against firm muscles, hard and unyielding as a brick wall. “Good morning, papa!” His words are lost somewhere in the fabric of his dad’s t-shirt.

“Are you feeling better?” Still pressed up against his father, Gai feels the words more than he hears them. He nods, hoping this will be enough of a reply. Training, that’s what he needs right now. Hard training, so he’ll be ready. “That must have been quite the nightmare you had. Do you want to talk about it?”

Gai ignores the question. Making use of his small build, he slips out of his father’s embrace and, kicking off the blanket, hops to his feet. “I’m feeling really good today! Can we go to the training grounds?”

His father frowns at him. “It’s Monday, Gai. I have missions and you have temple school.”

“Temple school?” he blurts out and that earns him an even deeper frown. “I thought I didn’t have to go today because I was sick last night and it’s only a week until the entrance exams anyway!” he adds quickly, in an attempt to mask the fact that he has completely forgotten about the existence of temple school.

“Are you still feeling sick? If you’re sick, we have to go see a doctor. I’ll have to cancel my missions…” A shadow crosses Dai’s face. If his father doesn’t go on his missions, he won’t get paid. Internally, Gai realizes, his dad is already recalculating their budget. Clearly, they cannot afford this, but there isn’t much Dai can do. He can’t leave his sick child unattended.

“I’m fine!” Gai forces a grin. “I was just joking! I feel great!” To prove his point, he runs to his closet and starts to dig around for something to wear. “I can’t wait to go to temple school! And I can’t wait to take the exams next week!” Even though he doesn’t quite feel the youthful exuberance of a five-year-old yet, he knows he has to fake it for the time being. The last thing he wants is to worry his father.  

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Gai calls over his shoulder. He’s found a small sleeveless Might Suit that will probably fit him and is already half out of his pajamas. As he zips up the suit, his hair falls into his eyes, obscuring his vision. This is irritating and will get in the way of training and it makes him frown and shake his head. “But I need a haircut!”

***

It is decided that the haircut has to wait until after temple school, so Gai gets dressed, washes up, brushes his teeth, wolfs down breakfast and then gets a piggyback-ride from his father. It’s a race against time and Gai has to count the seconds under his breath so they’ll know if they’ve set a new record.

But then his father rounds a corner and there, in broad daylight, in the middle of the sidewalk, walking towards them at a leisurely pace, is _Orochimaru_. At first Gai thinks he’s wrong, because why isn’t anyone screaming, but how could he be wrong? There is not a single human being in the world that could be mistaken for the legendary snake sannin.

His father, however, just nods a greeting – which is ignored – and keeps running while Gai silently debates launching a surprise attack from behind. He dismisses the idea. In his current state, he wouldn’t stand a chance, not against someone like Orochimaru, who would kill him in a second without batting an eye.

It takes him the rest of the trip to figure it out. At this point in time, Orochimaru is still more or less a regular Konoha jounin, which explains the uniform he was wearing. It’s going to be a couple more years until the truth about him will come to light and he’ll leave the village a missing nin. And when he returns…

Gai shivers, wrapping his arms more tightly around his dad’s neck. But then his father stops and he realizes that they have arrived at their destination. Only now does Gai truly fathom how unwilling he is to part ways with his father, even for as little as a few hours.

“Time?” Dai asks in good humor, reaching up to tousle Gai’s hair.

“I lost count,” Gai mumbles into the back of his father’s neck. He breathes in as deeply as he can, filling his nostrils with Dai’s scent, so he will never forget. Then he reluctantly loosens his grip and slides down his father’s back to land on his feet.

“Oh well, we’ll get a do-over when I come pick you up tonight! That’s a promise!” For the second time that day, Dai wraps his arms around Gai and gives him a long tight hug.

As he walks up the stone steps to the entrance of temple school, where a smiling elderly woman is greeting a couple of other parents and their children, Gai feels his father’s gaze on him. When he turns around halfway, his dad is still there, grinning and waving. He keeps his distance from the others, Gai thinks, or maybe they’re keeping their distance from him. Either way, Dai stays at the bottom of the stairs while the others pass him by to climb up with their kids, giving him a wide berth and not a single glance.

***

Unsurprisingly, temple school turns out to be very boring. Gai looks around the chubby children’s faces and recognizes no one. He’s never had a good memory for faces and with the de-aged versions there is just no hope for him. So he withdraws into a corner and does pushups and sit-ups and handstands until Aburame-sensei comes over and tries to make him draw pictures with the other children. She is not amused when Gai tells her in no uncertain terms that hot-blooded training is more important than drawing pictures and that maybe her other young charges might benefit from exercise as well, which is why the temple school should seriously consider investing in some training weights. 

In the end she sits him down and makes him practice writing kana on thick drawing paper. Gai writes his name neatly in green crayon, earning him praise from sensei and wide-eyed admiration from the little girls. The boys stare at him and pull faces when sensei’s back is turned.

He passes his time watching the others. From what he remembers, Anko and Kurenai should be here but since they are a couple of years younger than he is, they are probably over in the baby-room where another two teachers are watching over and playing with the toddlers.

As a five-year-old Gai is one of the oldest children and all the big children have to sit quietly around the table and practice writing. It makes him feel restless. And bored. And antsy. The tedium makes his mind wander to the future, the things that lie ahead. Gai tries to visualize them, events that, like the rungs of a ladder, step by step, lead to their doom.

It is still three years until Kakashi turns seven and his father goes on that fateful mission. If somehow Gai can stop this from happening… If Hatake Sakumo never loses face, surely he will never commit suicide and Kakashi will grow up with the loving father he deserves. Gai nods to himself, yes, this is the first thing he has to change.

“Excuse me, Gai-kun? Can I have the green crayon, please? You’ve been using it the whole time…”

Startled from his thoughts, Gai looks up into the frankly adorable face of a little girl who is smiling shyly at him. He very nearly says, _of course, young lady!_ as he hands over the crayon but manages to stop himself at the last second. What comes out of his mouth instead is an awkwardly stammered “Of-okay…”

She accepts the crayon and her gaze slides off his face down to the sheet of paper in front of him.

“Ka…ka..shi?” she asks.

Gai follows her eyes and gulps as realization hits. While lost in thought, he covered his whole sheet with the same recurring sequence of kana. Ka-ka-shi. He didn’t even notice! Gai feels his cheeks heating, which is ridiculous; he’s a thirty-one year old man!

“Your writing is really neat!” The girl smiles brightly at him and at that moment, a deep ache inexplicably pierces Gai’s heart.  

“Rin-chan! Did you get the crayon? I want to draw flowers!” another girl’s voice comes from across the table.

_Rin-chan._

Shell-shocked, Gai watches her perk up and chirp, “Yup!” Then she bows to him like a proper young lady, saying, “Thank you, Gai-kun!” and turns away to run back to her end of the table.

He had forgotten. He had forgotten her completely. No, that’s not true, he does have vague memories of Rin, the tragically dead girl, who used to be someone he knew at the academy. But that he had known her even before then, he’d simply forgotten. Only now he remembers that her cheeks won’t be tattooed until the she enters the academy and that on the first day she beams and proudly shows the markings to all her friends and how she’ll keep tracing their edges with the tips of her fingers during the whole first month of class.  Gai noticed these details and forgot them because they didn’t matter to him, but they do now.

This time Rin will live.

***

While writing, Gai keeps watching Rin out of the corner of his eye. There is not much to observe, however, since as far as he can tell, she is a well-mannered, kind little girl who seems to have many friends. And she is safe here, now, her death still years away, so there is no reason for him to be quite so tense.

Chewing on his lip, Gai tries his hand at a few kanji between his rows of kana. It’s not easy to write like five-year-old, though even as he thinks this, he can practically hear Ebisu and Genma deadpan that he of all people should have absolutely no problem with this particular task.  

Sensei leans over his shoulder for a fleeting glance and gasps. “Gai, good work! You’ve improved so much! ”

It’s a little embarrassing how her praise makes Gai’s narrow chest swell with pride. But then, in the thirty plus years of his life, no one has ever complimented his writing.

“I can write ʻmouseʼ too.”

“Really? Show me!”

Gai obliges, frowning in faux-concentration as he laboriously draws each stroke.

“That’s wonderful! You must have practiced all weekend!”

“My father helped me!”

“Ah…” Her tone has cooled significantly and Gai feels his face fall as he suddenly remembers other moments like this one and how they usually ended.  

He is not surprised when she turns away with a brisk, “Well, I guess _he_ must have a lot of spare time.” Next to him a boy stage whispers, “Gai’s papa has shit for brains, my dad said.” There’s a round of snickering. It hurts. They’re just little children who don’t know any better, Gai tries to tell himself that, but it still hurts so much and it makes him want to tear up his paper and throw it at his teacher’s head and then he wants to run around the table and take everyone else’s sheets as well and tear them up too. His whole body vibrates with the urge to scream and punch and kick and a memory flashes before his eyes. Sensei’s face red and pinched and furious, bits of paper like confetti in her hair, a girl crying over her shredded drawing, a broken chair and finally his father prostrating himself before the teachers, apologizing over and over for his son’s unacceptable behavior and begging them not to expel him.

Gai closes his eyes and breathes. Immediately the storm of emotions subsides because he wills it to. He has that power now. He is in control; he can change things.

***

On his second day of temple school, Gai is even less enthusiastic. He does what he is told, but constantly thinks about sneaking out – it would be too easy – only to realize that following through would get his father in trouble, so it’s a no.

If only Kakashi were here… Kakashi, however, is not a temple school kid; that’s one thing Gai knows because he is sure he would have remembered if they’d met before the academy. His memory of their first fateful encounter is one he treasures, after all.

With no Kakashi and no real friends – the other children avoid him now that their teasing doesn’t lead to entertaining outbursts any longer – Gai spends half the day by himself, trying to come up with ideas on how to change the future, specifically the White Fang’s mission and its outcome. Which turns out to be a lot harder than he thought.

By the time sensei announces that it’s soon time for lunch and everyone should put away their papers and crayons, he has gotten exactly nowhere.

Sighing, Gai folds up his work – scattered words like genin and jounin and Sakumo and a long row of question marks interspersed with little doodles of turtles and puppies, needless to say sensei had no praise for him today – and goes to fetch his lunchbox from his little backpack in the hallway.

As he approaches the classroom door, he hears voices coming from outside. Gai hesitates, behind him, the other children are still busy clearing the table and sensei is over by the window lecturing a little boy on the evils of not washing your hands after a bathroom break.

Gai opens the door a crack and listens.

“You didn’t bring him at all yesterday and today, you show up three hours late? What are we supposed to think, Uchiha-san?”

Uchiha. Gai’s stomach clenches. He opens the door a little wider and catches sight of a woman standing with her back to him. Gai vaguely remembers hearing her voice before. She must be one of the teachers, maybe from the toddler group.

The person she is talking to is standing in the shadows, but Gai senses a strong chakra presence. This must be a jounin.

“He is old enough to walk here by himself. I told him to do that. The child lacks discipline; it’s your job to teach him.” A man’s voice. A bored sort of derision in the way he speaks, as though all of this has nothing to do with him.

“That—You’re not even his legal guardian! Where is he?”

“On a mission.” There’s movement as the man shoves something towards the teacher. “Look, I brought the kid, okay? You deal with him. I have more important things to do.” With that he turns on his heel, his sharp steps resounding on the stone floor.

“Obito—“

That’s all Gai needs to hear. Uchiha Obito! Maybe he can’t figure out how to avert Hatake Sakumo’s fate quite yet, but here is the obvious solution to at least one problem. Gai rips the door open and runs into the hallway. If he ends this now Neji will—

The short figure next to sensei, Gai only glances at him to confirm his target. Spiky black hair, those orange goggles, it’s him. No need to look too closely. He jumps, putting everything he has into the flying kick, his jaw clenched tightly shut, Gai lands foot first in Obito’s face. So little resistance. Just a comical sort of _plonk_ as the back of Obito’s head strikes the stone floor. Then, after a half second delay, sensei screams and the children erupt into panicked wailing.

Within seconds, Gai is surrounded by teachers, one of whom grabs him by the scruff of his neck and drags him away from Obito. Rin-chan runs past them and to the felled boy, who, Gai notices, is still breathing, his eyelids fluttering. That’s the last thing Gai sees of him, before he is pulled into another room and the door is slammed shut.

***

“How could you do something so horrible?!” Aburame-sensei’s face is perfectly crimson. A few bugs crawl out from under the hem of her shirt and up into her hair. They also seem upset. “How many times have I told you, you must never hit or kick or punch other children! Do you even know how badly you’ve hurt Obito-kun? He has to go to the hospital now! Do you have any idea how scared he is?”

Mutely, Gai shakes his head. The truth is that he instantly regretted his actions. Lying on the floor, blood trickling out of his nose, pale but for the red imprint of Gai’s foot on his forehead, Obito looked incredibly small and helpless.  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“That’s not good enough! I’m going to have to speak to your father about this, young man!”

***

“Why did you kick that Uchiha boy?” his father asks when they’re finally walking home.

There’s no piggyback ride today because Gai doesn’t deserve one. Aburame-sensei yelled at his father for a good twenty minutes before they could leave.

Gai drags his feet. He cried in sensei’s office and said that he was sorry over and over – which wasn’t hard because he truly was sorry. If he’d been at full – or even half – his normal strength, he would have taken the boy’s head right off. He’d have killed a defenseless child.  

That was not the person Maito Gai was supposed to be. Maito Gai, Konoha’s Green Beast of Prey, believed that all life was precious, that you needed a reason to kill and that you never attacked a helpless person. He also believed that there was no such thing as fate, that people could change and grow and become anything they wanted to be as long as they worked hard and had faith in themselves.

Gai swallows; tears are prickling at the corners of his eyes again. When Gai attacked him, Uchiha Obito was still an innocent child, he had not yet become the twisted creature that would kill Neji and break Kakashi’s heart. Gai had ignored his own principles, instead of changing the future he had changed himself, he’d betrayed his code because it seemed to offer an easy path to accomplishing his goals. It’s unforgivable!

“Gai?” his father prods.

“I don’t know,” Gai mumbles. “It was wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You didn’t know what else to do?” Gai flinches; he can’t remember his father ever sounding this disappointed in him before. Dai stops in his tracks and grabs Gai’s shoulders to stop him too, then Dai turns him around so they’re facing each other. As usual, his father’s eyes are intense as they’re searching Gai’s face. “Why didn’t you try to be nice? Why didn’t you try to be his friend?”

Gai blinks, so touched by his father’s incredible wisdom that a single tear slides down his cheek, leaving a thin hot trail, straight like a cut. “I’m going to,” he shouts, making heads turn in the street, as he throws himself into his dad’s open arms. “I promise, I’m going to!”


End file.
